Walking the Line: Brokering Humanitarian Identities in Conflict Research

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, academic research in conflict-affected contexts relies on support from humanitarian organizations. Humanitarian organizations constitute sites of study in and of themselves; they partner with academics to roll out surveys or randomized program interventions; and they frequently facilitate security, logistics and transportation for independent researchers. We use a research partnership between IRC, the World Bank, and academic researchers in the UK, the US and eastern DR Congo, to explore the effects of humanitarian affiliation on conflict field research. In investigating when, how and under what conditions humanitarian identities are adopted by researchers (and how these affiliations shape research dynamics) we identify three paradoxes. First, “wearing humanitarian clothes” to facilitate research logistics can both facilitate and constrain access. Second, humanitarian affiliations invoked by researchers to ensure security and protection in volatile research sites can undermine the “insider” status of local staff. Finally, working through humanitarian organizations allows local and international researchers to benefit from the protections and privileges afforded to humanitarian employees without providing any of the services on which privileged access rests. In this article, we map out decisions faced by local and international researchers concerning when to adopt and discard humanitarian identities, and the fraught logistical, ethical and methodological consequences of these decisions.

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their gratitude to all the staff at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) who made this research possible, especially to the research team and the Women’s Protection and Empowerment Technical Unit. We are particularly grateful to Pamela Mallinga, Danielle Roth, and Nadine Rudahindwa at IRC, and to Julia Vaillant at the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, for their support and input. Additionally, we thank Maria Eriksson Baaz and Mats Utas for their editorial support and comments on earlier drafts. We are also grateful to Morten Bøäs, Kathryn Falb, Marsha Henry, Ilaria Michelis, Swati Parashar, Sarah Parkinson, and the anonymous reviewers at Civil Wars, who each provided generous comments on this manuscript. This research was made possible through the generous financial support of the State and Peacebuilding Fund and the Nordic Trust Fund at the World Bank, as well as the World Bank’s Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality. All errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We follow Baaz and Utas (Introduction to this issue) in defining brokers as ‘key persons in-between the researcher and the researched who regulate access and flows of knowledge between them.’ Baaz and Utas note that brokers ‘often become the eyes and ears of researchers.’ Because our article focuses on the role of humanitarian organizations in facilitating academic research in conflict-affected contexts, we are predominantly interested in the brokering roles played by actors implicated in this work. A key component of Baaz and Utas’ definition is that brokers also often assume the role of ‘local research assistant’. While we focus on a range of different ‘brokers’ (including drivers, program staff, and organizational security personnel), three of the article’s authors – Banga, Cimanuka, and Hategekimana – also assumed the role of local research assistants in the field. Banga, Cimanuka, and Hategekimana were tasked with data collection, yet were also employees of the International Rescue Committee, the humanitarian organization facilitating our research. Lake, Lewis and Pierotti periodically participated in data collection, and oversaw the research from afar. These different roles are discussed in depth in Part III of the manuscript.

2. Our discussion centers on a research project that took place from April 2016 to January 2017. We write this deeply conscious of the changing political and humanitarian landscape in DRC since the culmination of the project. We offer our respects to the humanitarians, investigators, peacekeepers, activists, journalists, and others whose lives were taken in their efforts to mitigate the worst effects of conflict, and/or in the pursuit of peace, truth, and justice in DRC and beyond.

3. Academic-humanitarian partnerships also have implications vis-à-vis humanitarian programming, which are important to consider in their own right but fall outside the scope of this particular article.

4. The World Bank Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) was contracted by IRC to conduct a mixed-methods randomized control trial evaluation of its program, Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP). This article focuses exclusively on the two qualitative phases of this research conducted by the authors from April 2016 to January 2017.

5. We note van der Haar et al. 2013 as a key exception. We also acknowledge a parallel literature on research ethics in experimental research, which foregrounds the ethical implications of decisions made in the research process, but does not typically focus explicitly on humanitarian-academic partnerships (e.g., Baaz and Stern 2008, Verweijen 2015).

6. We are cognisant of the fact that humanitarian organizations are not always perceived as sources of protection or assistance, and in many conflict contexts are received with apprehension or suspicion. The academic-humanitarian identity inevitably shifts with the shifting power relations underpinning the organization’s reputation within a particular research site.

7. The study was approved by the IRC Institutional Review Board on 7 March 2016 (IRB number: 00009752) and a continuing review application was approved on 30 March 2017.

8. For each of the six researchers, all travel, visa invitations, access, ordres de missions, transport, office space, and other important logistical details were facilitated by IRC.

9. See, for example, Baaz and Stern (2008) and Verweijen (2015).

10. The authors note that the security protections afforded by ‘humanitarian status’ vary regionally and contextually and cannot be taken for granted. The shrinking humanitarian space within which personnel operate engenders increasingly significant costs, particularly for national staff who are typically exposed to far greater risks (Humanitarian Outcomes 2017, p. 3). Moreover, humanitarians are not always perceived as sources of protection. Indeed, in the aftermath of failed missions and interventions, for example, humanitarian actors can be targeted directly, or viewed with resentment and hostility. Humanitarian actors and other interveners have also been known to abuse their protective status, including through the sexual exploitation and abuse of host populations. As such, the impact of humanitarian identity on a research process depends heavily on the contextual dynamics of the specific research site. Throughout our research in eastern DRC, a familiarity with and acceptance of IRC staff was evident, and expectations of humanitarian assistance were widespread; however, we do not presume this to be the case in other research settings.

11. Field Notes. North Kivu. 6 May 2016.

12. It is obvious, although worth noting, that when the security situation in humanitarian settings deteriorates significantly, foreign employees of international organizations are often evacuated from the country altogether, while national employees may be left behind.

13. Field Notes, South Kivu, 22 May 2018.

14. Field Notes. South Kivu. 22 May 2018.

15. Field Notes. South Kivu. 14 May 2018.

16. Field Notes. North Kivu. 9 May 2018.

17. See Sanghera and Thapar-Björkert (2008) on gatekeeping and access more broadly.

18. See Thapa‐Björkert and Henry (2004) on researcher positionality, and insider-outsider status. See Henry et al. (2009) and Narayan (1993) for a discussion of the false dichotomy such a discussion creates. These discussions have important implications for Phase Two of the project, given that the embedded Congolese researchers were always ‘outside’ by virtue of their researcher status, despite many facets of shared identity with research participants.

19. Field Notes. North Kivu. 9 May 2018.

20. Field Notes. North Kivu. 22 September 2016.

21. Field Notes. South Kivu. 14 May 2018. GDH refers to Groupe de Discussion des Hommes, the term used for men’s EMAP groups.

22. Field Notes. South Kivu. 14 May 2018.

23. Field Notes. North Kivu. 9 May 2018.

24. Field Notes. North Kivu. 25 April 2016.

25. Field Notes. South Kivu. 23 May 2018.

26. The EMAP protocol states that should instances of violence perpetrated by EMAP members be reported or identified over the course of the sessions, the male participant should be excluded from the program. The EMAP program includes an explicit commitment to non-violence among its participants (IRC 2013). The EMAP facilitators were community members hired and trained by IRC to lead the weekly discussion groups, but were not IRC staff, per se.

27. Field Notes. North Kivu. 9 May 2018.

28. Field Notes. South Kivu. 23 May 2018.